Remember Past Rescue, Past Rescues Fuel Present Prayerful Waiting

Psalm 40 How do you make it through when trouble comes? What is your coping strategy? We all know that trouble is inevitable in a world so skewed by sin; either nature will cause us to experience loss or suffering due to diagnosis or natural disaster, or sin in others or ourselves will lead us to suffer. As you look back on life, how have you made it through in the past? And as you think about that, how will you in the future? How can do you do so confidently? Joyfully? Let me just throw a couple more questions into the mix this morning. What difference does your faith make to the way you have and will approach struggle and suffering? And how do we as a church family prepare one another to go through such times without becoming bitter or angry or withdrawn? They are the questions Psalm 40 helps us think through and prepare to face and pray through. We’re going to use two pegs to hang our thoughts on this morning: Remember past rescue, past rescues fuel present prayerful waiting. Remember past rescues David begins the Psalm by remembering and recounting past troubles and past rescues. Look at how he describes the situation he is remembering, he was in a “slimy pit” “mud and mire”. David was facing insecurity, potentially life threatening danger, desperation and insecurity. How did he respond? (1)He waited patiently for God and God saved him. Notice that it is God who acts to save – God turns, God heard, God lifted, God set. God reverses his situation. Where before there was only the insecurity, fear and danger of the sucking cloying slime now God has set him somewhere firm and secure(2). God rescued. And God’s rescue is a complete rescue, he doesn’t get him so far and then leave David to do the rest himself, no God sets his feet on a rock, somewhere solid, stable, secure, sure. God provides security, stability and safety and more than that God’s rescue brings David to a place of joy(3). “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.” David looks back and retells God’s rescue in the past and recounts the joy it brought. And (3b)notice this isn’t something he keeps to himself, his song is sung in public so that “Many will see and fear the LORD, and put their trust in him.” David doesn’t keep his joy or rescue private, he doesn’t hoard it as his experience, he sings so many hear and trust God. And from his experience he draws out truth. (4)Blessed are those who trust God. David isn’t saying this because of his experience, as if somewhere there is a dark Psalm from when God didn’t answer. Sometimes we can be a bit like that with God can’t we? We think God is only as good as our latest experience of him. David is stating a truth about God and about those who trust him. Those who trust God are blessed, favoured, happy, and joyful. And the contrast he makes is with those who look to false gods or powerful people to rescue them. They can’t, that way lays despair and shattered hopes whereas those who trust God will be blessed. That doesn’t mean we never experience hardship, because look at v1-2. It doesn’t mean we get instant answers to prayer because David had to wait patiently. But ultimately it is true that “Blessed are those who make the LORD their trust.” David has proven that true and (5)God has proven it again and again and again as the Bible records for us. How should God’s people respond? (6-8)A right response to the many rescues of God is to want to hear God’s word and obey him wholeheartedly. You cannot earn God’s rescue. God is not a divine vending machine whereby if you put the right sacrifice in you get the right rescue out. Neither is God like the loan shark who insists you pay him back with interest for the help he has given. God is the saving rescuing God of grace and what he desires, what he delights in is those who respond in grateful loving obedience. A rescued life devoted to his glory. And a heart so captivated leads to lips tuned to sing God’s praise and tell others of his rescues. We speak about what we love, we speak about what amazes us. We praise the rescuer when we have been rescued. Imagine for a minute you were swimming in the sea on holiday and got caught in a rip tide and were getting washed out to sea and sucked under. Imagine the lifeboat was launched and saved you. You would tell everyone about it. Anyone who asked about your holiday would hear about your rescue. You’d praise the RNLI to any and everyone. That is what David is doing in the great assembly(9, 10), telling all Israel about the God who rescued him. He doesn’t seal his lips, or hide God’s righteousness away, or conceal his love and faithfulness. David doesn’t play hide and seek with God, people don’t have to hunt for hidden or submerged evidences of God’s rescue in his life. It is front and centre, he is loud and proud, God saves, God rescues, blessed is the man who trusts God. Turn to Hebrews 10v5 (p 1142). Hebrews is all about the greatness, the incomparability of Jesus. Jesus and the salvation he brings are better than angels, better than Moses and the Mosaic covenant. Jesus brings a greater rest, he is a better high priest, and he offers better sacrifices. The sacrifices offered in the Old Testament couldn’t take away sin, so Christ came into the world and by his sacrifice on the cross makes us right with God. Rescuing us from sin and our utter inability to do what God delights in and do what is right. (14)“For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Do you see the greatness of our rescue? We cannot make ourselves right with God, we cannot – no matter how hard we try – do God’s will perfectly. We deserve judgement, but by grace and faith are credited with Jesus perfect record. In the greatest rescue mankind has ever seen. Does that amaze us? Doesn’t that put a new song in our hearts? David as he remembers and recalls God’s rescues praises God to others, what about us? Too often we are reserved about the very thing we ought not to be reserved about. Leaving others to play hide and seek for God in our lives. God and his goodness, faithfulness and rescue ought to be front and centre in our lives. And that really matters because to hide it away is unhelpful for us and other. Do you see the encouragement for us in this Psalm – rehearse God’s rescues. Tell yourself and others again and again, recount, recall, retell. Tell of God’s mercies, his action, his guidance, and his answer to your prayers. Tell others (3, 9-10) Why? Because it fuels faith(3). It reminds us of the rescuing nature of our God and calls us to praise him, it puts a new song in our hearts. It reminds us again of the blessings of being God’s children. Recounting past rescue leads to joy filled overflowing praise which fuels present patience in trouble. Past rescues fuels present prayerful faith Now David finds himself in trouble again(11-12). He’s surrounded with too many troubles to count, one thing after another after another. He needs rescue again and so he asks God to be what he already knows he is, merciful, loving, and faithful. He needs rescue in part because of his own sin, he is weighed down with his guilt so much so that it feels as if his heart will fail. And his enemies threaten, shame, confuse and mock. David is like a boxer on the ropes, assailed by enemies in public and by conviction of his sin in private. And so he prays “Be pleased to save me, LORD; come quickly, LORD, to help me.” His rehearsing, recounting and retelling of God’s rescues now fuels his trusting turning to prayer for rescue. He knows God is faithful, loyal in love, gracious and rescuing and so he turns and prays. You can see the logic can’t you – God you rescued then, you have proven your character, please rescue me now. He doesn’t ask presumptuously. He doesn’t demand rescue. He doesn’t feel he deserves it. He humbly asks God (17)“I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay.” He trusts in the character and love of the God he knows, who is my God. We share his hope and his help. David’s God is our God when we pray to God we pray to the one who through Jesus is our help, our deliverer, our God, our Father. We pray not presumptuously but as loved adopted children asking the help of our loving almighty Father in heaven. Is that out response to trouble? If not it’s probably because we have not grounded ourselves in stories of God’s rescues. We need to fuel one another faith more and more. We need to be sharing the stories of God’s rescues. When did you last share the story of how you came to faith in Jesus, of God’s rescue of you with someone in your church family? Share that story – it fuels faith. Share stories of what God has been doing since, every little rescue – why? Because it fuels faith. Share answers to prayer because it fuels faith. God is our help and deliverer and we need to hear that again and again and again so that when trouble comes our instinctive response is to cry out to the one we know in our bones loves, helps, and rescues.

“But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God do not delay.”